Will non-Western democracies ever become interested in promoting democracy and human rights?

[CumbrianLefty]

People will eventually start taking democracy and human rights seriously again, once it becomes quite clear that loudmouthed populists with "easy answers" to everything don't actually have the solutions.

[CumbrianLefty]

a country's national interest can be defined more or less narrowly and upholding a rule based international order can be in the national interest of a country (when it comes to basic principles such as non-aggression it is arguably in the interest of most countries).

This is a vital point that many self-styled "realists" simply don't get.

[CumbrianLefty]

the purpose of this thread is not to discuss "Western hypocrisy", but to discuss whether non-Western democracies may pursue a value based foreign policy, so please stay on topic otherwise I'll have to close the thread.

Who decides the values? Are those values fixed and unchanging or they open to adjustment over time? Are those values subject to interpretation in the eye of the beholder or is there only one interpretation that is allowed?

Well, "values" are by definition somewhat vague and flexible - the method of realising them will vary.

[CumbrianLefty]

I'm not sure the example of the US is a particularly good endorsement of that strategy.

We have promoted democracy and human rights to varying degrees and have never applied those standards consistently. So you end up with it being a problem that people in Cuba who speak out against the government are put in jail, but for some reason it's not a problem when that happens to people in Saudi Arabia. And as a result, people in other countries largely don't take us seriously on those issues anyway.

Trying to promote democracy and human rights in Afghanistan and Iraq was done at the expense of trillions of dollars and thousands of American lives. It wasn't worth it. If Iraqis had really wanted to be rid of Saddam Hussein, they'd have gotten rid of him themselves. If Afghans really cared about their daughters being able to go to school, they'd have defended their rights to do so. India or Brazil would be crazy to embark on a misadventure of that scale.

Whilst you are not totally wrong, it takes an awful lot of courage to rise up against a totalitarian state like Saddam's was - and wasn't there an uprising post the 1991 war, which we let him crush?